


Running at the Edges

by serenesavagery (windrunnerdreamer)



Series: Tilted Radiance [1]
Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Abstract, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguity, Edgedancer Kaladin, Gen, adolin has his own spren, don't worry!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23945923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windrunnerdreamer/pseuds/serenesavagery
Summary: "I will...." Kaladin whispered, tears pricking out of his eyes."Remember those forgotten."
Series: Tilted Radiance [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1726240
Comments: 11
Kudos: 27





	Running at the Edges

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: our favorite angst boy doesn't fly here, he uses the surge of abrasion to glide across air currents and ignore the friction!

Cultivation had been watching him for a long time. 

A child of Tanavast. 

Not Honor. Tanavast. 

This child was very much like him.

Frighteningly so. 

* * *

Mayalaran remembered a man speaking words. 

He had loved everything around him. Had healed everything around him. 

And now, she watched this child, who struggled to heal but had the conviction to do so. 

"I choose him." 

She does not say it, but she thinks it. 

* * *

Somehow, Kaladin was able to heal his patients with more success than he had bargained for. 

Somehow, Kaladin feels the call to healing a lot stronger than he should have. 

Somehow, Kaladin finds himself attending to that need within him, to _care_ , despite the melancholy in him. 

Kaladin almost stops himself from going to the army, but doesn't. 

And when he doesn't, he wonders if he would have been happier as a surgeon. 

* * *

"Words." 

That is all he has been able to get out of the strange spren covered with vines. 

It wasn't a vinespren, but a frighteningly sapient spren. 

"Do you have a name?" Kaladin finds himself asking. 

The spren looks up at him solemnly, and Kaladin feels his spirit shake. 

"Names. Yours." She says, with the strength of a leaf fluttering in the wind. 

Kaladin blinked. Names. 

How long had it been since he heard another name, rather than a number? 

"Kaladin." 

"Mayalaran." She says, solemnly. 

* * *

"You cannot forget." Maya says, her eyes pinning him in place on his way to the Honor Chasm. 

"Forget what?" Kaladin asks harshly, but trembling all the same. 

"The forgotten." Maya says, and Kaladin has no time for strangely cryptic spren, despite the companionship this one has given him. 

"What in the name of the Stormfather do you mean?" Kaladin asks, narrowing his eyes. 

"You forgot yourself." Maya says softly, and Kaladin flinches like he's been slapped. 

"You forgot yourself, Kaladin." She says, her words carrying in the wind. 

"That's-" 

But he can't deny the truth in those words.

"You _must_ remember." Maya says quietly, with a note of pleading and Kaladin is taken aback. 

Her words are what stop him from taking a step further into that chasm. 

* * *

Those words are what spur him to help people than heed the call of war. 

The call of war thrums in his bones, yes, but not so much as the need to _heal, to save._

* * *

"If we throw them away...then how are we any better than Damnation itself?" Kaladin asks softly, to himself, when his men protest and say they don't have enough supplies for the other bridge crews. 

Forgotten. 

Being forgotten...

It was a terrible, terrible curse and Kaladin only remembers the feeling of nothingness, that terrible knowledge of no one having cared, the emptiness deep in him...

The crushing sorrow of that knowledge. The loss to live that flowed in him, after knowing that terrible truth. 

And what had healed it? 

"No. I'm _staying for everyone here._ " Kaladin says resolutely, and he feels Maya's approval in his mind, somewhere and he feels strengthened. 

* * *

"Speak the Words, Kaladin!" Maya shouts with an energy he hasn't seen from the usually quiet spren, and Kaladin grips his spear. 

"I will...." Kaladin whispered, tears pricking out of his eyes, as the truth of those words seeped itself into him, becoming a part of him. 

" _Remember those forgotten_."

* * *

"Could I pursue my studies as a surgeon?" 

Kaladin does not know why the words tumble out of him, as Dalinar turns back and starts walking. 

Now though, at those words, Dalinar stops and looks at Kaladin curiously. 

"You were a surgeon?" 

"Apprentice." Kaladin says, strangely embarrassed at the audacious request. 

But...healing people was now a part of him. How could he be expected to throw that away? 

Dalinar blinked before smiling slightly. "Of course, son." He says, gently. 

_I'm not your son, you don't have to call me that,_ is what Kaladin wants to say but can't bring himself to, because he doesn't have the heart to do so. 

The wonder in Dalinar's eyes and the sorrow in them probably disallowed him from doing so. 

* * *

_**Interlude:** _

"I don't need you working on my wounds, bridgeboy." 

Kaladin itches to draw the scalpel to Adolin's neck, but one pointed look from Maya inside the pockets of his trousers prevents him from doing so. 

* * *

* * *

Adolin Kholin is nothing short of perspective. Annoyingly so. 

"I saw you sliding your way up a building during the Assassin on White's attack- _admit_ it, bridgeboy, there's something strange about you." Adolin hisses, jabbing out a finger. 

Kaladin gives him a look. "Do you need help with your eyes?" 

"I know what I saw!" 

"No, you don't. You got hit on your head, and I know that, why? Because I also happen to be your surgeon." Kaladin says with a unbidden smugness as Adolin's face becomes a very unbecoming shade of angry red. 

"So, take my advice, princeling- take some _rest_." Kaladin says with a very smug smile, causing Adolin to growl and stomp off. 

"He's smart." Maya says with a small smile, approvingly. 

"Just annoying." Kaladin grumbles. 

* * *

Being both a surgeon and a soldier is conflicting for Kaladin. 

But he was saving lives anyway, what did it matter? 

Maya, for some reason, wasn't herself these days. 

* * *

"You can't just denounce someone before knowing them, Kaladin." Maya says, and Kaladin exhales. 

"I don't have to listen to what they have to say." 

* * *

He's proved himself wrong, when he listens to Shallan Davar, down in the chasms. 

* * *

_No one's listened to the king before,_ Kaladin realizes, when the man raves drunkenly about his own failures. 

_And why should they?_

_When he was nothing but a failure?_

_Failures were to be ignored, weren't they? Removed._

_And who am I to say that?_ Kaladin wonders, and then the absence of Maya hits him even more, now like a wound. 

_Just because I save people's lives doesn't mean I get to own them._

_Oh, storms, how did it come to this?_

He realizes what has happened, and it makes him ashamed. 

He had forgotten to stay his hatred.

* * *

"I will listen," he says, through bloodied lips. "To those ignored." 

And the warmth of light, shows him the way. 

* * *

Fighting a man owning the skies is not easy, for Kaladin wishes them, but then Maya laughs. 

"You _can_ own the skies, Kaladin." 

And then he glides on air, the feeling of it light and free. 

* * *

"Is he one of the Knights Radiant then?" Adolin asks, breathing out with awe as Kaladin danced above in the skies with a furious grace, locking his spear with the Assassin in White's Blade. 

"Yes." Dalinar says, also unable to take his eyes off the warrior in the sky. 

"Makes sense." Adolin says with a laugh, remembering Kaladin sliding across the sands in the duel with exactly the same amount of finesse. 

* * *

_**Interlude:** _

If either Adolin or Shallan get tripped by a vine, Kaladin is not to blame. 

Absolutely not. 

Not even if it helped him sleep better. 

Not even if Maya gives him a pointed _look_. 

What?

It was...fun. 

* * *

* * *

_Listen to those ignored._

Didn't those parshmen slaves deserve that, Kaladin wondered and he wonders if he's doing the right thing. 

* * *

He uses Stormlight to grow a rockbud for Sah's daughter, despite Maya's raised eyebrows at the whole debacle and she smiles at the joy on the child's face when she sees it. 

"Is this for me?" Vai asks shyly, and Kaladin laughs. 

"Yes, little one." 

Vai hugs him, much to his surprise, and Kaladin's eyes fill with tears, as this child's innocence and love encompass him and he wonders, what made them so different from humans? 

When they felt every emotion, in the same way? 

When they _loved_?

* * *

"We can't ignore the common parshmen!" Kaladin Stormblessed snaps at her and it takes all of Jasnah's experience dealing with men to not blow up at him in turn. 

"Captain, I can fully understand and sympathize-" 

"As if." 

Jasnah glares at him before continuing. "-but everything has to be accounted for. There's no reason their leaders won't convince them to join the fight." 

"And that'll happen, if we don't listen to what they have to say. I'm sorry, Brightness, if my Ideals don't work with yours." The captain says stiffly, and Jasnah raises an eyebrow before sighing. 

When she had read about Edgedancers caring about the unimportant and trivialities, she hadn't pegged it to be so exasperating. 

Then again...could it be called unimportant? Trivial? 

He wasn't wrong, she thought, troubled. 

* * *

The feeling of life regurgitating itself under his hands, when he uses Regrowth, fills him with peace and warmth. 

And the relief of seeing life flow back into their eyes, that with which they saw, helps him stay the wretch for a while. 

* * *

He's able to save Elhokar, and the relief allows him to breathe. 

"You're _alive_ ," Kaladin breathes out and Elhokar looks dazed, while Moash stares- in betrayal, amazement and shock. 

And somehow, the world seemed righted at that moment, as he saved the life of a man he had refused to listen to. 

* * *

Elhokar is quiet in Shadesmar, but he regards Maya with a fascination and reverence that makes both Kaladin and Maya embarrassed. 

(Adolin for his part, enjoys Maya's friendliness and enjoys Maya's affection.)

Shallan's keenspren is unnerving, but at least Graea is friendly. 

Adolin's Shardblade turns out to be a dark ball of light (it's strange, even for Kaladin) that seems intent on humming strange tunes for no reason. 

"I don't think that's a musicspren." Kaladin says dryly, when Adolin asks him so. 

"She used to be a lightspren." Maya says, with a grimace and Adolin hums to himself in contemplation. 

"Huh." 

* * *

The truth is a horrible thing to bear, but Kaladin cannot stray away from it. 

He has not sworn the Fourth Ideal, but he has no idea of what it is. He can feel it, but it is like a speck of dust floating in the wind- invisible, but present. 

"Maya...why is it right to fight with the humans, then?" Kaladin asks, turning over the rock in his fingers. 

Remembering Tien was hard, but now the ache is lessening, and he finds strength to remember what Tien used to do for him. 

"Because it is. I don't know, but it is." 

It's not good enough for Kaladin, and perhaps Maya senses that, for she hugs him.

He then sighs. He is still confused, still terrified by Shadesmar and the truths that lie ahead. 

The smiles of the recovered, the signs of life, his father's admiration at his abilities to heal, run through his mind and he stands up, knowing what he has to do. 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo! About the flying thing- see it's not so much as flying as GLIDING, there's s a difference there! Kaladin uses the Surge of Abrasion to move along air! And this is purely headcanon, I believe the Edgedancers can ignore the friction...somewhere, I don't know, there's a reason I suck at physics, and glide along air!

**Author's Note:**

> this is a new series i'm doing so as to remind myself of canon. lmao.
> 
> these will be short and only contain glimpses into their lives as Radiants of different orders
> 
> hope you've enjoyed! ^^


End file.
